Two locks, not one
Players get stuck on the star chart and assume they are under-geared. Almost always they are standing in front of a lock they have misidentified as a difficulty wall.
There are two distinct gates:
Junctions are task gates between regions. Each one asks you to complete specific missions, sometimes craft something, sometimes hit a mastery threshold. Clear the tasks, fight the specter, and the next region opens.
Quests gate entire locations regardless of how much of the chart you have cleared. Three regions work this way:
| Region | Unlocked by |
|---|---|
| Lua | The Second Dream |
| Kuva Fortress | The War Within |
| Zariman | Angels of the Zariman |
Everything else is Junction progression. Seventeen base regions make up the Origin System: Earth, Venus, Mercury, Mars, Ceres, Phobos, Deimos, Jupiter, Europa, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Eris, Sedna, the Void and your Dojo.
Knowing which lock is in front of you saves an hour of aimless node clearing. If the missing region is Lua, no amount of Junction work will open it.
The regions, and what each is for
The chart is not a difficulty ladder so much as a resource map. Each region carries its own drop pool, which the farming guide maps in detail.
Three regions have open worlds attached:
- Earth — Cetus and the Plains of Eidolon
- Venus — Fortuna and Orb Vallis
- Deimos — Necralisk and the Cambion Drift
Those three are worth flagging because the Plains of Eidolon and Orb Vallis nodes unlock immediately after Vor’s Prize and are not Mastery Rank locked. A brand new player can walk into either without finishing the chart. Whether they should is a different question, covered in the open worlds guide.
Two regions carry the story gates that most affect progression: Lua for everything the Second Dream opens, and the Kuva Fortress for the War Within’s Kuva content. Both are also required for the Steel Path, which is why players who rushed the chart find the Steel Path requirement list longer than expected.
Empyrean Proxima is a separate chart
Railjack content does not live on the same map and does not follow Junction rules. It is its own eight-region board: Earth, Venus, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and Veil Proxima, plus the Dojo.
The unlock logic is different in two ways:
Joining versus starting. After The Archwing quest you can join public Railjack missions hosted by players who own a Railjack. To start your own you need Rising Tide completed.
Intrinsics replace Junctions. Successive Proxima regions are not Junction-gated. They require a certain Intrinsics level, which you raise by playing Railjack missions. That means a player who grinds Intrinsics can open the Veil while barely touching the ground chart, and vice versa.
Intrinsics ranks also award 1,500 mastery points each, which makes Railjack one of the more efficient mastery sources for the time invested. The mastery rank guide covers where that ranks against other sources.
Nodes are worth mastery, and Junctions are worth more
Two facts that are easy to miss:
First completion of a node awards mastery points. Not every node — the wiki notes that not all Star Chart nodes give mastery XP, so a player can reach the maximum without clearing everything. But the ones that do award it once, on first completion.
Junctions award 1,000 points for the first specter victory. That is a third of a fully-levelled weapon for a fight that takes a few minutes, which makes Junction clearing one of the best mastery-per-hour activities in the early game.
Both are one-time awards. Replaying a node gives nothing.
Reading the chart as a new player
The route that avoids dead ends:
- Finish Vor’s Prize, which opens the Plains and Orb Vallis nodes early.
- Push Junctions in order, because each one hands you the next region’s resource pool and the junction itself pays 1,000 mastery.
- Do quests as they appear, since three regions are quest-locked and no amount of chart progress substitutes.
- Do not clear every node. You need a route through, not a completed map. Total completion is a Steel Path prerequisite and a completionist goal, not a progression requirement.
- Visit the open worlds when you need something specific, not to “level up there”.
The main quest order guide sequences the quests so that the gates open in the right order rather than in whatever order you happen to unlock them.
Where players actually get stuck
Four stalls account for most progression blocks, and none of them are gear problems.
Lua. The most common one, because it looks like a Junction-adjacent region and is actually quest-gated. No amount of node clearing opens it. The Second Dream does.
The Kuva Fortress. Same shape, different quest. The War Within. Players who have been told to “finish the chart for the Steel Path” often discover the Fortress is missing and assume they missed a node rather than a quest.
Void. Not a progression region at all — it is where fissure missions live. If you have been avoiding it because it looks endgame, you have been avoiding the relic system, which the void fissure guide covers.
Proxima. A player who has cleared the ground chart and cannot start Railjack missions is missing Rising Tide, not a Junction. Joining other players’ missions works after The Archwing, which is why the mode seems available before it is.
When the chart stops mattering
Once you have a route through and the main quests done, the star chart becomes a farm selector rather than a progression system. The remaining content gates are:
- Steel Path — every node that existed before The New War, plus the quest-locked ones. The Steel Path guide lists the three exceptions that do not block you.
- Arbitrations — Pluto access and the Eris Junction task “Equip a Focus Lens”.
- Duviri — The Duviri Paradox, independent of chart progress.
At that point the chart is a menu. Which node you pick depends on the resource, the mission type, or the Nightwave act you are trying to complete.